


i am coming home to you (if it's the last thing that i do)

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Pushing Daisies AU, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3564452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much like Play-Doh villages, Toaster Strudel adverts, and the ability to wake the dead, Dan had been a constant fixture in Phil’s childhood for as long as he could remember. He simply was. Until, one day, he wasn’t.</p><p>(a pushing daisies au, or the youtube rpf forensic fairy tale you’ve always wanted)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am coming home to you (if it's the last thing that i do)

**Author's Note:**

> dear god what have i done. [[title](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mountaingoats/saxrohmer1.html)] [[fridged girlfriend trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge)] i had to shift dan’s age and hometown because the whole thing fell apart otherwise, just ignore it.
> 
> major cws for death, murder, transphobic violence, transphobic families

At this very moment, in Rawtenstall, England, young Phil was nine years, ten months, thirty-seven days, and three minutes old. It was Christmas Eve, and this was the day he realized that he wasn’t like the other children.

Hitherto the moment young Phil realized he wasn’t like the other children, he had in fact already suspected it, because he was in love with the boy next door. His name was Dan, or, at least, part of it was Dan. Everyone else called him Danielle; only Phil knew his secret identity. At this very moment, Dan was eight years, five months, thirteen days, and seven minutes old, and about to receive a Christmas present. The Christmas present, a shiny rainbowfish which Phil had bought with his own money at the pet store down the street, was two years, two months, twelve days, and forty-one minutes old, and about to receive death.

Phil, bowl tucked safely under his arm, was reaching for the doorbell of Dan’s house when the fish, through the cruel red web of destiny, the universe, and the secret wizard society Phil firmly believed lived in the London sewers and controlled most major things including life, death, and which side of your toast burned, let out a single, fishy bubble-cough, and floated belly-up in its temperature-controlled prison. Phil was crushed. Dan or his parents would come to answer the door in only a moment, and he would have nothing to show for all his penny-scrounging and fish-researching save a tiny corpse. Or perhaps it wasn’t really dead? How did one check? Phil’s fish research had not been extensive. Mostly he’d asked the lady at the pet store which kind was a) prettiest, b) hardest to kill. And yet there floated poor Susan. Clearly, Susan was very easy to kill. Christmas was ruined.

Phil reached carefully into the bowl, intending to poke it, just to make sure. His index finger barely brushed the fish’s fin before there was a static crackle like lightning and Susan turned itself rightside up, immediately resuming its circular dancing around the bowl as if nothing strange had ever happened to it in the two years it’d sucked oxygen from its surroundings. A watery grave, though still full of water, ceased to be a grave. Susan lived. Dan got a fish for Christmas.

Young Phil, too, had been given a gift: he could touch dead things and bring them back to life. The caveats and consequences of the gift were not immediately apparent, nor were they of immediate concern. It did not seem to come from any particular person or place, but from the same twists and turns of fate that had Susan biting the proverbial doom biscuit a little earlier than intended. And then throwing up the proverbial doom biscuit. Because Phil had revived it with a single touch. Like a superhero.

“What if we were superheroes?” he said to Dan the next day, in Dan’s bedroom, Christmas loot piled in the corner and Susan swimming happily and vigorously on his dresser. They were playing pretend. They often played pretend, imagining and inhabiting whole worlds in which they ruled the skies.

“The Amazing Phil,” Dan agreed, already forming miniature and mildly misshapen caped versions of himself and Phil out of Play-Doh. “And his sidekick, Dan-something. I’m working on it. I want to breathe fire. Only, I’m immune.”

“That is so cool,” Phil said, thinking about his hands, which brought life to flesh, and Dan’s, which brought life to clay. “So cool.”

In the years that followed, Phil tested his new powers hopefully and with the delicate attention of a future linguistics major. At first too nervous to touch anything with a face, he focused his experimentation on houseplants. He amassed a carefully cultivated windowsill collection of small spiky cacti, creeping ivy, and Fiddleleaf fig. Dry leaves sprang to spring green at his touch; withering buds blossomed. This way, with minimal bloodshed, he discovered the first and nearly most important catch of his curse: keep a dead thing alive for more than a minute, and something else of equal value has to die, i.e., to sustain a wilting Fiddleleaf fig, a cactus would have to croak. But there was one more problem, and it was this: touch a dead thing once, and you bring it back to life. Touch a dead thing twice, and the effects of the first touch are reversed, and no amount of retouching will verse it once more. Since Phil practised mainly on plants, rotten fruit, and, when the opportunity arose, the occasional unfortunate once-fortunate twice-unfortunate-again bird, this did not seem like an enormous sacrifice, or something he need really concern himself with. Until, one day, it was.

Much like Play-Doh villages, Toaster Strudel adverts, and the ability to wake the dead, Dan had been a constant fixture in Phil’s childhood for as long as he could remember. Though Phil had met both his parents, he didn’t consider Dan as having been born, or hatched, or bought; unlike Play-Doh villages or Toaster Strudel adverts but precisely like the ability to wake the dead, he did not come with instructions or a money-back guarantee. He simply _was_. Until, one day, he wasn’t.

The first time Danielle Howell dropped out of Phil Lester’s world was because after years of friendship, he moved away, leaving Phil with a single hormone-heady kiss, no calling card, and the unsettling feeling that the sun had been extinguished. The second time Danielle Howell dropped out of Phil Lester’s world, and, indeed, out of every world, was because, after years of no contact, he died, leaving Phil with the memory of a kiss, a mystery to solve, and a childhood sweetheart to touch— but only once.

It was eighteen years, nine months, two days, and six minutes later, from here on out referred to as _now_. Young Phil had become a vlogger. He lived a sheltered life: he made YouTube videos and woke the dead, but only for a minute, and only a single time. His windows were lined with flowers that never faded, leaves that never browned, herbs that never lost their freshness.

Chris Kendall was the sole keeper of the vlogger’s secret, much like the vlogger himself was, a long time ago, the sole keeper of the boy next door’s secret. Chris, a private investigator and connoisseur of advanced knitting patterns, witnessed Phil’s peculiar gift by accident, on one of his numerous and nasty cases; both the job, which they would come to call the Case of the Pizza Delivery Boy Bandit, and the culprit, whom they would come to call ‘deceased,’ had ended with a mistake, a touch, a cry of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I had to!” a full-body involuntary shudder, and an extremely interested P.I., who happened to be in just the right place at just the wrong time. Murders were much easier to solve when you could ask the victim who killed them, so the vlogger and the P.I. developed a symbiosis. Chris dragged in homicide cases like cats drag in dead mice, proud and looking for praise, and Phil provided Chris with the means to close them— until the day Chris brought Phil a case he didn’t want to close. In fact, he would rather leave it wide open, forever and ever, because to close it would mean to lose the love of his life for the third and final time.

(“Really? Is _second_ and final not enough?” Chris would later ask. “He was already dead! That’s pretty final! What’s one more touch to you?”

“Everything,” Phil would say, as peals of Dan’s delighted laughter emerged from the next room, where he’d confiscated Phil’s laptop to watch kitten videos. “One more touch is everything to me.”)

Chris dragged in the mouse on an unusually sunny afternoon. Phil greeted him with the usual pleasantries, lemonade, and deep sense that something was about to go horribly, horribly wrong. Things with Chris nearly always went horribly, horribly wrong, generally because they always involved murder. They sat at the kitchen table and admired Phil’s many plants, and the stripes of rainbow cast onto the linoleum by the light from the window.

“Okay,” Phil finally asked, “spit it out, who died?”

Chris slammed his palm on the table the way he did when a suspect wouldn’t answer his questions. The ice in his glass of lemonade clinked reproachfully. “You always think I have ulterior motives! Can’t I just drop by to say hello? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Mhm. Who died and where are we going?”

Chris leant back in his chair, kicking his boots up on the table, and then removed them when he caught Phil’s disapproving look. “Some girl they found stuffed in an icebox. The 5 o’clock news is calling her the Fridged Girlfriend. Clever. The reward is enormous, so we have to get to Rawtenstall before she goes in the ground. You ever been there?”

Phil was having that feeling again; call it a premonition. “I grew up there,” he said. “This dead girl from Rawtenstall, does she have a name?”

“Danielle Howell.”

  


*

  


Dan never returned to Rawtenstall after he moved away, and Phil moved on. He thought of Dan often, the way one does when one loses someone to the ever-expanding vastness of space, when a friendship reaches a chasm it cannot cross, a small but significant obstacle it just cannot surpass. He just as often considered that over the years his memories of being nine-going-on-ten and the days he spent with Dan had grown hazy, dreamlike and exaggerated, and perhaps he’d only been in love with the idea of being in love, the way children sometimes are; he would likely never know.

Now, pulling up in front of the familiar estate sign for Rawtenstall Funeral Home, mere moments from seeing Dan again, he did know. When Chris, in his kitchen, said _Danielle Howell_ , Phil felt the tumblers of the cosmos click into place, felt his heart give a great leap of faith and his mind already make itself up, felt like there was a higher power guiding his life toward this single, simple fact: he was always destined to end up here. He was always destined to love and lose and love again. Time exaggerated nothing.

“So let me get this straight,” Chris said, absent-mindedly waving a substantial amount of cash beneath the funeral director’s nose. “Or at least very, very bisexual. The Fridged Girlfriend is, unfortunately for his memory, really the Fridged Boyfriend with a transphobic family, and when you were ten he was _your_ (yet to be fridged) boyfriend? This isn’t going to cause a conflict of interest, is it? Because you _know_ I don’t do messy.”

“You’re a private investigator,” Phil said, nervously adjusting his suit cuffs for the millionth time. “You love messy.”

“ _You_ love that dead boy in there,” Chris pointed out, jerking his thumb toward the door, behind which rested Dan, in the most permanent of senses.

“I haven’t seen him since I was nine.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It won’t be a problem,” said Phil, lying through his teeth. He put his hand on the doorknob, and then stopped. “Sorry, actually, I want— Can I do this one alone? It might be… emotional. On account of our history. There might even be weeping. I might _weep_ , Chris.”

Chris arched an eyebrow.

“You won’t want to see that, right? So it’s probably best if you just... stay… right… here. And don’t go anywhere. Or follow me. At all. In fact, you should probably go home. Catch you later? Okay, bye.” Phil opened the door and slipped into the room.

He really wasn’t prepared for the coffin. He thought he was, but he wasn’t. It was already open, and he was even less prepared for the body inside, because it looked— _he_ looked— exactly as Phil remembered. People can change a lot in eighteen years, and Dan had certainly gotten older, cut his hair brutally short, grown into his perpetual lankiness, started wearing pants instead of dresses, but beneath all that still beat the heart of the little boy Phil fell head over heels for in the way that you fall head over heels for other little boys when you are nine. Except now that heart wasn’t doing much beating at all.

The facts were these: Dan Howell, twenty-seven years, eight months, three days, eleven minutes old, and no older, was discovered by a peckish house-sitter in his own icebox, approximately an hour after his body had been stuffed into it. He seemed to have suffered minimal to no damage from the fridge’s frigid temperature, since the icebox was, in the hallowed tradition of college student life, waiting to be fixed, and anyway that wasn’t what killed him— what killed him were the hands around his neck. Phil could see the marks now, red lines curving up his throat from the collar of his shirt. Who the hands belonged to seemed a question Dan alone could answer.

Phil’s own hand hesitated for longer than he would have liked. Once he did this, he only had one minute, sixty seconds to say hello and then goodbye again, for good. It was such a short burst of time, and he had so much he wanted to say. Ever so carefully, ever so tenderly, his thumb brushed the bone of Dan’s cold cheek. Dan gasped for breath, eyes snapping open. Fingers flying to his throat, he cried, “God, please, don’t!”

“Dan, it’s me, it’s okay!” Phil said, as if Dan might recognize him after so many years, jerking away from the coffin. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

Slowly, realizing his assailant was nowhere to be found, Dan lowered his hands and sat up, confused. “I—” he started, and then, catching sight of Phil, asked, “What’s happening? Who are you?”

“Do you remember the little boy who lived across the street from you when you were eight and gave you a fish for Christmas?”

Dan’s face broke into a startled grin. Phil couldn’t help but return it; yet another thing that hadn’t changed between them. “Phil? Oh my God, how are you? Hang on, how am I? Last I remember, someone was trying to kill me.”

Phil winced. “Actually, not _trying_ so much as _succeeding_. This may be difficult to hear, and even more difficult to believe, but—”

“I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“Oh. Yes. Unfortunately. Just a bit. I’m terribly sorry. How did you know?”

“Well,” Dan said, adjusting his fringe like a nervous habit. “I’m in a skirt, aren’t I? Heard the phrase _wouldn’t be caught dead_? Like that, except more literal than I ever would have liked. Plus there was the whole strangling business; kind of gave it away. Did I make it to the news? Did they use the right pronouns? No, they didn’t, you don’t have to say it, I can see it on your face. Figures.”

“Again, terribly sorry,” Phil said mournfully. “But I’m going to have to make this very quick. I can touch dead people and bring them back to life so I touched you and now you’re alive again but you’re only allowed a minute. Less than a minute, in fact, since we’ve been talking.”

“A minute?” Dan echoed. “A minute to live? What could I possibly do with a minute?”

“You could tell me who killed you so justice can be served.”

Dan crossed his arms. “That’s wonderful, but I’ve no idea. They were wearing a mask and gloves. For all my luck, it was probably completely random.”

Phil swore under his breath. From the other side of the door came a great banging, and then the sound of Chris waylaying someone they definitely didn’t want coming in and seeing the supposed corpse of Dan Howell sitting up in his coffin.

“Is my time up?” Dan asked, and suddenly he looked very small, and again Phil thought of the child he knew eighteen years ago. “Please, I don’t want—” He swallowed the end of his sentence, and the red marks around his throat shifted with it. Phil wondered if it had scared him to die; if he felt it.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said again, unable to keep the hurt from his voice.

“Well, I suppose there’s no point in crying about it,” Dan said, although it seemed quite obvious he wanted to cry about it. “And thank you, y’know, for calling me Dan. Not everyone does.”

“I used to— When I lived across from you, I had a cru— I was in lo— You,” Phil said, pausing for breath, face burning, “were my first kiss.”

“Yeah?” Dan smiled. “You were my first kiss, too. Hey, if I have to die again, in less than a minute, would you want to be my last kiss? First and last? Is that weird?”

“That’s not weird,” Phil said. “That’s symmetrical.”

Dan’s minute of life and Phil’s minute of second chances was almost over. It was right now, or never again. Dan leant forward over the rim of the coffin; Phil moved to meet him, feeling something within him crack and soar all at once. He’d wanted nothing more for years than for them to meet again, really, truly, nothing in the world, even when he wouldn’t admit it to himself, nothing more than to kiss Dan one last time before he had to go, except—

Except, perhaps, for Dan to stay.

Their lips were mere moments apart. Phil couldn’t do it.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, taking one impulsive step away from Dan and into the unknown. “I can’t.”

“Oh,” Dan said, disappointed. “That’s okay. If you don’t want to kiss me, that’s alright, I only thought—”

“No, I do,” Phil said automatically, because when he said _I can’t_ , he didn’t mean _kiss you_ , he meant, _lose you_. “Believe me, I want to. But, um, what if you... didn’t have to be dead?”

“Oh,” said Dan, brightening up. “Well. That’d be preferable.”

  


*

  


“I can’t touch you? At all? Ever again?”

Phil perched his elbow on his knee, and then his chin on his hand. Dan had noticed quickly that everything Phil did, he did with absolute care; it came from a lifetime of knowing exactly which things to touch or not touch, he supposed. It was a little bit of a turn-on, but it also seemed lonely. Maybe that was why Phil had fervently ignored the letting-it-go part of loving something and let Dan keep on living. That, or he’d woken up with a hankering to chase a funeral coach all the way to the cemetery and then set it on fire to distract attention from the corpse he was (carefully) helping out of its own coffin.

After the coffin-chasing, and somehow ditching Chris along the way, Dan and Phil had relocated to Phil’s apartment, where he’d lent Dan some clothes and explained the rest of the rules of alive-again life as best he knew them. Which was not especially well.

“I’ve never done this with a person before,” he admitted. “So there are some things I’m fuzzy on. But, no, I’m absolutely sure you cannot touch me. At all. Ever. Unless you want to go back to being dead, which would be okay, if you did. Well, not actually, I’d be crushed, but it’s ultimately your decision. Your life.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, as if this was dawning on him for the first time. “It _is_ my life— and just so we’re clear, I am extremely glad to have it back and I will try very hard never to lose it again and you can’t have it. Which I guess means that kiss is definitely off the table? What a shame.”

Phil opened his mouth, and then shut it. “I’ve lost my train of thought,” he said softly, and Dan laughed.

“Alright, if I can’t kiss you, I suppose I’ll just have to interrogate you instead. Eighteen years is a long time. What do you actually _do_? You can’t make much of a living out of dead people.”

“You’d be surprised,” Phil said. “I solve murders with that detective from before (his name is Chris, nice guy, but suspicious of everything and everyone. Nature of the job). We split the rewards but I do most of the work. Y’know, because I can wake up the victims and ask who did it.”

Dan raised his eyebrows. “Is there a reward for my murder? Is that why you revived me? Would I still be alive right now if I knew who killed me? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. You seem to do a lot of this, reviving.”

“It’s just you, I swear,” Phil said hastily. “And it wasn’t about the reward, not really. I mean, there is one, but I didn’t go in with a plan or ulterior motives, I just wanted… I wanted to say goodbye. I know that’s selfish.”

Dan wasn’t sure what to do with that. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“Not that long! I didn’t dwell on it— you— I mean, I did dwell a little, honestly, at times, and over the years I guess I sort of romanticized you in my head— you were my best friend— but I didn’t know I was going to do what I did today until the moment I did it, or… didn’t do it.” He took a breath. “Anyway. In addition to detectiving I also make YouTube videos.”

“Naughty ones?” Dan asked, delighted.

“No!” Phil blushed. “Ones about, I don’t know, my plants, or my job, or something. Things that happen to me. Leaving out some crucial details, of course. It’s embarrassing to say _people on the Internet think I’m funny_ out loud, like that counts for anything, and I know it’s not a real job, but it’s fun.”

Dan grinned. “Can I see? Can I borrow your laptop and watch them since I can’t ever go home again? How many have you made? What’s your username?”

Phil bent over and rested his forehead on his knees. “I already regret this,” he said, slightly muffled. “Yes, yes, so many, and it’s… it’s AmazingPhil.”

“I am,” Dan said gleefully, “ _so_ _glad_ you didn’t touch me again.”

Phil raised his head and looked at the boy he’d loved a long, long time ago and, to the surprise of precisely no one, probably definitely very much loved still. “Yeah,” he said. “So am I.”

Dan spent the rest of the day holed up in Phil’s room with his laptop. Phil hoped he was only watching videos and not replying to tweets or sending ‘ _hey I was murdered and now I’m not, have I got your attention and do you want to find and brutally dissect the freak who undid it?_ ’ tell-all emails to the press, and then he felt guilty about hoping for this when Dan had been through so much and Phil should have more faith in him and wouldn’t it serve him right, and wished he’d never hoped it at all.

That night, from the couch, he reached out and pressed his palm flat against the wall, pretending that, impossibly, ridiculously, childishly, he could feel the heat of Dan’s skin and his heart beating all the way through the plaster. He didn’t know it, but, on the other side of the wall, Dan was pretending, too.

  


*

  


When Dan emerged the next morning, he drank three cups of coffee, noisily explored Phil’s apartment, cried a bit — all courses of action Phil understood fully and politely pretended not to notice — and then sat down on the couch. “Can I ask you something?” he said, brow taking on a serious little furrow. “Several somethings, actually.”

“Of course.”

“Will I age or will I be twenty-seven forever while you get older? If I break a bone will it fix itself like a living body bone or stay broken like a dead body bone? What about bruising? Do I still have to do taxes now that I technically don’t exist? Can I even go outside? I mean, what do I do now? I’ve been given a second chance but are there side effects? Consequences? I know somebody else had to die for me to live longer than a minute and that weighs on me like bricks and I think it always will but in my opinion I was never supposed to be dead in the first place and it was really unfair so is letting me live really like balancing it out? Or did we just create more instability in the grand scheme of the universe? Either way you can’t take it back now even if I wanted you to and I quite like living so I guess I can’t blame you.” Dan paused for breath, shaky, and then repeated, quieter, almost defeated, “What do I do now?”

“I don’t know,” Phil admitted. “I’m sorry. I told you, I’ve never done this before. But you’re not still dead. You’re not, like, a zombie.”

“But if I were a zombie I would be the coolest and most disaffected zombie.”

“I’m sure. But you’re not. You were alive and then you were dead and now you’re alive again. As far as I know, your bones and bruises will heal, and you’ll get all your birthdays in the right order. As for going outside, not to be indelicate, but the person your family buried wasn’t really you, anyway, right? I mean, they didn’t bury anyone at all, since there was no body, but even so the news and all that knew you only by your birthname… You could start over. You could be… Daniel. No one has to know.”

Dan looked as though he might begin to cry again. “I guess dying is as good a reason as any to start living,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “By the way, I watched your videos. They were good. And I’m sorry about all the questions. I think a lot about the meaning of life, the universe, everything, etcetera, and being faced with my own transience in a startling and traumatic turn of events gives my over-anxious brainwaves a lot to work with.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I can’t see my family again?”

Phil’s expression was pained. “No, I’m so sorry. They can’t know. People aren’t used to this kind of thing, dead loved ones suddenly reappearing. It wouldn’t go well.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, like he knew the answer before he asked. “God, they must be crushed. My brother…” He shook his head. “Not that they ever respected me, I mean, the me I am now. I was loved, sure, but not respected. There is a difference. I can’t go back to law school either, I suppose? Nothing lost there. Good riddance, in fact. Hey, I won’t have to pay my student loans! Someone will, I expect, but not me. You got me out of law school and I won’t have to pay my student loans. If I wouldn’t keel over on the spot I’d hug you right now.”

Phil smiled shyly. Dan smiled back.

“Okay, last question for now. Do we still have no idea who killed me? Are you going after the reward?”

“I don’t want the reward,” Phil said.

“But it’s _fifty thousand dollars_ , I saw on the news. That much money would tempt anyone. I won’t be mad if you want the reward but I _will_ be livid if you lie to me about it.”

“I don’t want the reward.”

“I’ll be so mad!”

“Dan,” Phil said, slowly and deliberately, “I don’t want the reward. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I have you. You are living and breathing and able to do anything you want (within reason) when you are supposed to be six feet underground. I did that. I helped. Knowing that however misguided my intentions or their outcomes, I did a good thing for you is reward enough. More than enough.”

Dan made a slightly wounded noise. “Wow, you are a really nice person. I don’t recall you being quite this nice. I am definitely not this nice. I want the reward.”

Phil blinked. He was not expecting that. “What?”

“I want the reward,” Dan repeated. “I think we should take the case and split it with your detective friend. I want to know who killed me, and I don’t have anything now, not even clothes, so fifty thousand dollars would be good. And— remember when we were kids, and we pretended to be superheroes?” He grinned. “It’d be just like that. The Amazing Phil and his intrepid sidekick, Dan the Alive-Again Avenger, come back from the dead to solve his own murder.”

“I thought you breathed fire to which only you were immune.”

“Yeah, well,” Dan said. “My reality is much more fantastic now. I’m fantastic. _You’re_ fantastic. We’re all bloody fantastic! Let’s go solve a murder.”

Phil smiled. “Maybe we could have lunch first?”

“Deal,” Dan agreed. “I’ll help so long as I don’t have to go near your fridge. I think I’ve had enough fridges for a lifetime. Both of them, even.”

They migrated to the kitchen for sandwiches, and passed a harrowing few minutes figuring out how best to move around each other without touching. After a while, Phil said, “You’re not actually, you know.”

“Hm?” Dan hummed, slicing his peanut-butter-and-jelly into cute kiddie triangles.

“My sidekick,” Phil clarified. “You’re not. You’re not, like, second-best, or less important, or just there for comedic relief. Your death was horrible, and senseless, and it didn’t make me stronger like the fridging trope is meant to. It _did_ give me meaning, I suppose, but only because it brought me back to you again. I know I… touched your life in more ways than one, and you feel like you owe me something for that, but you don’t have to stay here. With me. I’d like it if you did, but you don’t have to. You can be your own person. You can go back to school. You can move to France! You don’t have to be my sidekick, Dan. You’re already a hero.”

Dan stared at him for the longest twenty-two seconds of Phil’s life, which was saying a lot when one had to count their minutes so exactly, and then he yanked open a nearby kitchen drawer, tore a neat square of saran wrap from its box, placed it over Phil’s mouth, and kissed him. It was a clumsy kiss, but it was a kiss, and Phil could feel the heat of Dan’s miraculously living body even through the plastic, and he wondered if it counted as a second tryst if the first had happened in another lifetime. His hands reached out for Dan’s hips, and then froze; his heart clenched hard in the wake of an unexpected piece of the universe slotting yet again into place, _this this this, this is what I’ve been missing,_ and then that froze, too, for a moment. His gasp caught against the single layer that separated them. He wished they could get closer.

Eventually, Dan reeled back, saran wrap in hand. “Sorry,” he said, breathless. “I’ve wanted to do that again for, like, eighteen years.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Phil said, but even as he did he knew that now they’d reached that cliff, he would never be able to stop leaning forward to look over the edge. It was a good view. “I mean, I wanted you to. But you shouldn’t have. It’s dangerous.”

“We’re heroes, aren’t we?” Dan asked, waving the square of saran wrap. “We eat danger for breakfast. And right before lunch, apparently. Fancy finding out what else we can do with plastic?”

  


*

  


Dan and Phil agreed to meet Chris at a nearby café later that day, in order to plan their next move. The café, a charming Parisian number called Tarte Tuerie, was one at which Phil and Chris frequently held conference over coffee and miniature cakes, discussing their murder cases loudly and cheerfully, the way one might discuss a good movie, or the weather. Sometimes the café’s most popular — and, as far as Phil and Chris had been able to tell in all their comings and goings there, potentially only — waiter joined in. PJ was naturally chatty and Chris naturally reluctant to let him do his chatting, but a fresh pair of eyes, a smattering of local gossip, and endless caffeine had in the past proved to be invaluable to cold cases, and PJ had shiny liquid blue puppy eyes not even Chris could resist for long, so they kept him. Phil was worried that, since they were friendly with PJ, suddenly showing up with a third member of their group in tow might call too much attention to themselves, and someone might recognize Dan, but he needn’t have; Dan showed up in dark-tinted sunglasses and a trenchcoat he’d found shoved out of mind in the back of Phil’s closet. He looked ridiculous and the exact opposite of clandestine, Phil thought, but it worked. Everyone was too busy noticing his suspicious and bold dress choices to notice his suspicious and dead face.

Chris was already in his usual booth when they arrived, doodling in his detective pad and sipping coffee as bitter as a witch’s tit. He looked up at the sound of the bell jangling on the door, furtively motioning Dan and Phil into the booth.

“You said you were bringing a contact,” he said as they took their seats, glancing Dan up and down. “You didn’t say he was cute.”

Poker-faced, Dan tilted his sunglasses forward so Chris could see him properly.

“Shit!” Chris said, to the scandal of the other nearby café-goers. “You’re supposed to be in the ground!”

“Shout it a little louder, why don’t you?” Phil muttered, crossing his arms on the tabletop like it might protect his vital organs from harm. “Before you say anything, I didn’t trick you intentionally. It just sort of happened.”

“You let a dead boy live when you weren’t supposed to. How does that _just sort of happen_? Enlighten me.” Chris took a gulp of hot black coffee, remembered at the exact moment following this decision the second and most important rule of corpse-waking, and choked on it. “Oh, man,” he said, setting his cup down on its saucer. “Who died instead?”

Phil looked sheepish. “The funeral director? It’s in the papers. It’s a… random proximity thing.”

“Bitch, I was in proximity!”

Dan snorted and tried to cover it with his hand. Chris glared at him.

“He was a horrible, horrible person. He stole stuff. I’m not proud,” Phil said defensively, but then, looking across the table at Dan, he added, softer, “But I’d do it again.”

“It’s just so shockingly stupid,” Chris said, shaking his head. “I thought you were better than this. You have unshakable moral direction! You’re like a human cream puff! You quiver at the sight of butterflies and apologize to dead bodies! I just can’t believe you would touch Corpse Groom over here and not touch him again, even knowing what would happen. I mean, look, I know you were friends when you were kids but are you in love with him? Because it’s _that_ level of stupid.”

Phil was saved from having to respond by the appearance of PJ, as always cheerful, apron-clad, and bouncing on his heels.

“Hey, Phil, hey, Chris,” he said. “Running a case today? You want anything else? I’m happy to get you another coffee on the house. I know how busy you big strong men must be keeping our streets safe. Who’s your friend?” He peered at Dan and Dan, suddenly guilty, slid down in his seat, pulling his coat tighter around him.

“Hey,” PJ said, waving his pen at Dan. “Doesn’t he kind of look like that dead girl?”

“He looks _exactly_ like that dead girl,” Chris said, crossing his arms.

“Coffee, please,” Phil mumbled. PJ frowned, but obediently swanned off.

“Anyway, I’ve been pondering,” Dan said, once PJ had gone and they were alone again, for a given definition of alone when they were in a crowded café. “Your unorthodox business venture, I want in. It’s why we’re here. Phil and I talked it over and I thought, why don’t we figure out who killed me and split the money? Thirty-thirty-forty?” At Chris’ raised eyebrows, he added, “It’s only right I get more. I did die for it.”

Chris made a _fair enough_ face. “I could do thirty-thirty-forty.”

“I really don’t think this is safe,” Phil protested. “Someone could recognize you, or you could get hurt, or… or… the killer could come back. We don’t even know where to start! Dan, you’ve already died once. Don’t you think this is pushing your luck?”

Dan shrugged. “Luck pushed me first. Right into a refrigerator.”

Phil couldn’t exactly argue with that.

Breaking into Dan’s flat was relatively easy; after almost a month, it was no longer crawling with police investigators, and the neighbors had grown used to forensic specialists scuttling in and out and through the halls, so with Chris for a cover they slipped in without a problem. Once they’d reached the right door, it was only a matter of picking the lock.

“This feels so weird,” Dan said, watching critically as Chris coaxed a hairpin into turning the tumblers one by one. “I used to have a key. I guess my mum has it now. Hey, can I take my stuff? It is still mine, technically. Do you think anyone will notice?”

“So many things about this are giving me heart complications,” Phil said. “I’m going to die young and tragic and it’ll be your fault. Oh. Sorry. No offense.”

Dan waved it off. After a moment, thoughtful, he said, “Could you voodoo _yourself_ if you died? Either it’s been working this whole time and you’re immortal, or it could never work, like, because you’re _always_ touching yourself?” Backpedaling, Dan flushed. “Um, I mean—”

“Got it,” Chris announced triumphantly, cutting in before Dan could embarrass himself further. “Come on.”

One by one, they stepped into Dan’s flat. The personal effects still present at the time of Dan’s untimely demise had been cleaned out by the police or by Dan’s next of kin, after the initial investigative sweep-through, but much of the furniture still remained. Phil tried not to stare at the empty patch of floor where the refrigerator had been, nor to dwell too long on what it might have been like to be the unfortunate who had found Dan. He was sure it had put her off her lunch.

“That woman who found you,” Phil started, stuffing his hands in his pockets and letting Chris do all the snooping, “what was she doing? The news said house-sitting, but why did you need her to? Weren’t you here?”

“I was at a weekend Pride thing in London, staying with some friends. It was fun, til I came home early and got strangled in my own kitchen. Louise was only feeding my fish.”

Phil perked up. “You still have a fish?”

“Yes. Not the _same_ fish, unfortunately. Poor Susan kicked it ages ago.”

“Oh. Of course,” said Phil, although secretly he’d been hoping.

Dan followed Phil’s gaze to the bare patch where his fridge used to be. His face fell. “It’s funny,” he said softly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “If I’d only bothered to text Louise I was on my way, or if she’d come an hour earlier, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybe a different mess, but not this one.” He looked up at Phil. “In a way, I’m grateful, though. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have a second shot at life, without anyone breathing down my neck, forcing me to be someone I’m not. I wouldn’t have you. Whoever killed me, I almost want to thank them. Before I punch them in the face, of course. Is that weird?”

“That’s not weird,” Phil said, echoing their exchange from the funeral. “That’s… narratively meaningful.”

“If you babushkas are done kvetshing,” Chris said, startling them both. “Blue found a clue.” He held up a ring, a silver band with a sparkly stone that looked like it belonged on a woman’s slim finger. “It was wedged between the rubbish bin and the wall, which I guess is why it’s still here and not in police custody. Our killer could have removed her gloves, not noticed it slipping off... Recognize it?”

“Let me see.” Chris flashed it again, and Dan squinted at it a moment before shaking his head. “Nah. That’s my mum’s wedding ring. It must’ve fallen off when she was clearing out my belongings.”

“Yeah?” Chris said, unconvinced. He reached forward to pull the collar of Dan’s shirt down. The marks of ten fingers stood out red and gruesome against the base of his throat. Chris held the ring up to one of the slowly-fading bruises. It was the same size. “So why is it a perfect match?”

  


*

 

“It can’t have been her,” Dan insisted, hugging one of Phil’s throw pillows to his chest. “It’s just a coincidence. Lots of people have small hands. She _wouldn’t_. She’s my _mum_.”

The search of Dan’s apartment had slowed down after they found the ring; they’d all agreed there wasn’t much left for them after the hoards of police, anyway, and Dan seemed pretty broken up. Phil could hardly blame him; his own mother had always been nothing but lovely. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to suspect her of murder, especially his. So they stole Dan’s fish back from one of his neighbors and absconded home. It was the least they could do, after everything. Now, with Chris putting in some extra hours at his office, claiming he was falling behind on his other cases, Dan and Phil were yet again alone in Phil’s flat.

“If the ring fits,” Phil started to respond, and then, seeing the raw vulnerability on Dan’s face, thought better of it. “Why don’t I make us some tea?” he said gently. “It’s been a long day. We don’t have to talk about this now.”

Dan nodded into the throw pillow. Phil put the kettle on. After a moment, from the living room, as though he’d only just thought of it, Dan called, “Although...”

Phil poked his head around the corner. “Although?”

“We did fight,” Dan admitted guilty, sitting up a bit so that his bare legs showed. He still didn’t have any clothes of his own, so Phil had lent him another sleep shirt; it was large on Phil, too, and they were about the same size, so it stopped above Dan’s knees, and Phil was sorry to say it was very distracting. “Right before I left for London. She didn’t want me going to the Pride thing, said it was unseemly to flaunt our family secrets like that. I told her I didn’t think it should have to be a secret, and certainly not one that belonged to anyone else.”

“Good on you,” Phil said firmly, returning to the kitchen. “How do you take yours?”

“Hm? Oh, just milk, thanks. Anyway, after that I was like, tell me what this is _really_ about, you know? And apparently it was really about me not wanting to be her daughter anymore. As if I ever was. It ended up a screaming match, and then I took off. That was the last time I saw her.” Dan shook his head. Phil handed him his tea and took the seat across from him again. “She said.. she didn’t know who I was anymore. That she wished things could go back to the way they were. I just can’t believe she would kill me for it.”

“Most murders are spontaneous,” Phil said, trying to seem sympathetic instead of callous. “Crimes of passion, unplanned, split-second decisions based on the emotional instead of the rational.”

“She wore gloves. And a mask. I think she planned it a little. I guess a dead daughter was better than a living son.”

“Maybe neither of you knew she was going to do it until she did it.”

“Like how you revived me.”

Phil wanted to deny this, but he couldn’t; standing over Dan’s dead body, equipped with the power to change his circumstances, he had made a split-second decision. A crime of passion was exactly what he had committed. “Yes,” he said. “I just thought my world would be a better place with you in it.”

Dan nodded. Sadly, quietly, he said, “And my mum thought _her_ world would be a better place with _out_ me in it.”

  
  


*

  


The wedding ring alone wasn’t enough evidence to convict Mrs Howell of killing her son, but with the help of Dan’s former neighbors, Chris’ P.I. skills, PJ’s hot gossip and hotter coffee, the police, and an undercover meeting with the murderer herself, the vlogger, the detective, and the alive-again avenger pulled together a solid case for the murder of one Danielle Howell. She was well and truly dead, and could now be laid to rest; Daniel James No-Last-Name would take up the empty front row seat in the dinner theater of life which she had recently vacated.

Chris Kendall took up a completely different seat, one he was not used to— a back seat. He agreed to split the reward three ways, but he was not entirely thrilled when Dan began to accompany them on trips to the morgue, intending to help with the cases.

“Why is Corpse Groom here?” he asked the first time it happened, but he slung an arm around Dan’s shoulders, betraying just how much he’d come to like the kid in the short time they had known each other.

“He wanted to come,” Phil said.

“It takes my mind off my murderous mother, who’s now serving twenty to life for my homicide,” Dan said cheerfully. “Who’s ready to touch some dead bodies?”

Phil raised his hand. They uncovered the body in question. They looked at it dubiously, heads tilted. Most of it was missing.

“So are you on the team permanently now?” Chris asked Dan over the mangled remains of the late Hugh Laurent, mauled to death by a pack of ravenous dogs. “Are we a trio?”

“I’m thinking we bring PJ in, personally,” Dan said. “He was useful this time around. We could be a foursome. The Fantastic Foursome! The world can always use more superheroes.”

“I don’t need any more superheroes,” Phil said softly. “I’ve already got you.”

Dan smiled. “And I’ve got you.”

At this very moment, as they looked at each other, Phil reached around his back and held his own hand, pretending that he was holding Dan’s. And at this very moment, Dan was pretending to be holding Phil’s.

Privately, Phil thought, _Someone else died so that you could live, and that is my fault, and I would do it again. I would do it again and again a million times for the rest of my existence, because there is not a single variation of me that is home without you. In every universe, I will chose you. And I will never, ever, regret it._

**Author's Note:**

> 1) as a trans person i’m aware that not every trans person necessarily wants to hang onto their birthname or choose a new name that is a differently-gendered version of their birthname (i certainly didn’t); i hesitated to do this with dan due to how irritatingly often the trope appears in fic, or indeed in any media content involving trans people. however, if you’ve seen pushing daisies (i assume you have because you’re here), you’ll know that the nickname ned calls chuck (“chuck”) is a reworked form of her given name (“charlotte”), so i thought, in keeping with my source material, it would make the most sense for dan’s chosen name to be a masculine version of his birthname. also i firmly believe chuck is nonbinary like “thank you for calling me chuck, no one’s called me chuck since you” ??? tbh? tbh? trans!
> 
> 2) if you care, “tarte tuerie” translates roughly to “slaughter pie” or “murder pastry.” i think i'm so fucking clever


End file.
